From
its start in the nineteenth century science of religion has in its study of
religion focused primarily on religious concepts - gods, myths, holy texts and
the hereafter. It has given relatively little attention to the various forms of
actual religious behaviour, like praying, sacrifice, attending religious
gatherings and passing through life cycle rituals. In the last few decades the
interest in religious behaviour has grown, but even now science of religion
hardly investigates religious behaviour empirically. Although there is a
growing consensus that the description of religious behaviour necessarily forms
as valid a part of science of religion as the description of religious
concepts, almost no such systematic description has been written until this
day. Therefore, we ask ourselves in this thesis: is science of religion capable
of systematically and empirically describing contemporary religious behaviour?
And, if not, what could be done about it?

To
explore the problem we analysed in Chapter two a recent Leiden thesis in the
field of science of religion on changes in present day Islamic life cycle
rituals in the Netherlands (Dessing 2001). This dissertation shows that the
study of religious behaviour by science of religion is using almost exclusively
methods and theories of other disciplines. Doesn’t science of religion have, in
this respect, any methods and theories of its own?

In
Chapter three we examine the possibilities of science of religion,
concentrating on Dutch science of religion, which came into being as part of
the protestant theological curriculum in 1877. Science of religion basically
developed and employed three valid methods for its research of religions: the
historical method, comparison of (elements of) religions and the investigation
of the contents of religious concepts. The methodological possibilities of
science of religion remain therefore mainly interpretative in character. It
developed almost no empirical possibilities, in the sense of methodically
observing and describing human behaviour.

Theoretically
science of religion has a tendency to reduce its object – the religions of the
world - to something else. In the past, it was inclined to reduce religion to a
theological approach to God. Nowadays, the orientation toward the social
sciences is the dominant theoretical influence and, accordingly, modern science
of religion is disposed to reduce its object to an attribute of man or society.
For the study of religious behaviour the turn to the social sciences could have
been beneficial because the social sciences have developed empirical methods to
study human behaviour empirically and statistically. However, science of
religion did borrow some social theory, but it did not integrate these methods
of empirical investigation into its curriculum. For this reason it does not
have the methods for an empirical study of human behaviour, and we conclude
that science of religion is now incapable of studying contemporary religious
behaviour in an empirical manner.

In
Chapter four, we try to clarify the present position of science of religion by
setting it apart from other sciences that study human behaviour: the social and
the cultural sciences. There appears to be a gap between the social and the
cultural sciences. On the one hand, the social sciences are fully equipped to
investigate human behaviour empirically. But their study of cultural facts,
such as religious behaviour, often involves a reduction. Furthermore, it is
frustrated by the dilemma inherent in any socio-cultural study of human
behaviour of how to combine in a valid way social and cultural data: the
so-called institutionalisation dilemma. The cultural sciences on the other
hand, do have ways to study cultural phenomena in a sui generis manner,
but their methods are usually only interpretative in character and they have
almost no methods for studying human behaviour empirically. With its
traditionally strong orientation on studying languages, history and philosophy
and its interpretative methods, science of religion is obviously a typical
cultural discipline. And like the other cultural sciences it developed almost
no empirical methods to study human behaviour.

When
we ask, therefore, how science of religion can best study religious behaviour
in a scientific manner, our tentative answer is the following. First, science
of religion needs to recognize clearly its own character as a cultural science.
Accordingly, it can avoid reducing its object and put all its energy in
considering religion as a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Then it has to
face the problem: how can we empirically study human behaviour within the
cultural studies?

In
our study, we found that a purely cultural science of religion is already
existing: the artist-scholar Th.P. van Baaren (1912-1989), professor for the
history of religions and the comparative study of religion (science of
religion) at the University of Groningen from 1952 until 1980, has developed a
non-reductive cultural science of religion. In Chapters five and six we discuss
his work and we conclude that Van Baaren’s approach in the long run avoided a
theological and social reduction of its object. His investigations are based on
a broad scale of sound cultural methods and techniques.

In
our final chapter, we developed a model for the study of religious behaviour in
science of religion with sociolinguistics as an example: by combining the
empirical methods of the social sciences with the science of religion of Van
Baaren, focusing on behaviour. First, we extracted Van Baaren’s views on
religion. Based on this, we formulated a definition of religious behaviour:
institutionalised actions and avoidances with direct or indirect reference
towards concepts of superhuman beings. Then we formed a synchronic view of
religion, aiming at religious behaviour by reformulating all of Van Baaren’s
elements of religion into either religious actions or religious avoidances. In
the definition and the reformulation of elements, the hitherto unrealised
importance of the avoidances in a behavioural view of religion came out as a
surprise.

A
systematically sound empirical description of religious behaviour (a
religiography) proves to be the exhaustive description of all existing
religious behaviour within a given local religious community during at least
one year. For such a description, an unbroken research period of at least one
year is needed, with a possible extension for life cycle rituals and crisis
rituals. An added result of the developed model is its applicability to the
field of history of religion, where it can work as a scheme to evaluate the
reach of the already known information on religious behaviour. Finally, we
briefly discussed the possibilities for the different kinds of research on
religious behaviour.

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